The Human Centipede 3: The Final Sequence (2015)

"These films risk causing harm! They should be banned!"

Oh yes. Here we are again. There was absolutely no way I could ignore this film. And in glad I didn't. It's gloriously awful, and easily the best bad film I've seen all year.

The acting has more ham than a ham sandwich, with Dieter Laser chewing the scenery with gusto as disturbingly sadistic US prison governor William Boss. Boss is a believer in mediaeval torture for prisoners, and is horrible to his pretty secretary Daisy, whom he bullies terribly and forces to give daily blowjobs, and swallow. Oh, and he abandons her to the mercies of rioting prisoners, and ends up accidentally including her in the human centipede.  He's not a nice man, or stable.

His accountant, Dwight, is a truly awful Laurence R Harvey, horribly miscast. Dwight has a bright idea based on a certain two movies he's seen, and we inevitably end up with a massive human centipede as penal policy.

This is a very silly film that revels in its B movie status, completely different in tone from its two predecessors and especially from the rather serious second film, with its social conscience. I suppose there's a bit of satire there aimed at the American attitude to capital punishment, but if so it doesn't run very deep. But it's a fun way to spend ninety minutes. Well, except for the castration scene. That was gross.

The Human Centipede 2: Full Sequence (2011)

"Is this the perverted film you've been talking about?"

Oh, you just knew I had to blog the sequel.

This is much more splendidly disgusting than it's predecessor, which inevitably failed to live up to its stomach-turning reputation while being a perfectly decent standard issue horror. This is much more genuinely horrific, and not just in terms if the obvious body horror.

We now find ourselves, in a nicely metatextual move, in a world in which the previous film was just that- a film. The scene shifts to England, a bleak and monochrome England of run-down multi-storey car parks and barely inhabitable flats, areas redolent with poverty and the scent of violence and sexual abuse. Within this dark world we meet the weird, tragic Martin, a tragic and virginal loner who lives with his mum, endures a dead end job and is at the bottom of society. He is obsessed with The Human Centipede. He's also at the bottom of society and a very damaged and creepy young man, who punishes his own sexual urges by sand papering his own genitals; repression and arousal in a single act.

It's made clear, though, that it's not the film that made him this way; unsurprisingly, this horror film is not pushing a tabloidy, reactionary message about violent films be getting violence. It is Martin's environment that has made him what he is, and that environment is very dark indeed. 

Martin's mum is a horrible bully who bleakly and pointedly makes sure her son knows how she longs for death, and his dream hints clearly at his abusive childhood. Both he and his mum live in fear of their thuggish neighbour. His pet centipede seems to symbolise his late abusive father. This is a dark, dark world before we mention any of the human centipede stuff, a world in which the camera never looks at things straight on, as though to emphasise how alien this life is to the presumed middle class audience of this film, which is shot just like the art house flick that it isn't.

Martin uses his job as the car park security guard to murder and kidnap, and has gone to great lengths to lure Ashlynne, actress from the earlier film. It is clear from his drawings that he plans a much bigger centipede. Soon, indeed, he has eight people including a pregnant woman, soon joined by Ashlynne.

The human centipede is just the body horror, though; the most horrific thing about the film is the dynamic between mother and son. It is when he kills her, and then eats a meal with her corpse, that the film's darkest moment arrives. In shirt succession he then proceeds to violently kidnap the thuggish neighbour and kill his psychiatrist, whom he observes doing sexual things that he, a virgin, unable to attract girls and therefore fearful of and disgusted by sex, could never do.

He has his twelve "segments", and we slowly see the build-up to the horrific surgery to come. The surgery is amateurish, involving a staple gun and very little hygiene. The pregnant woman soon dies, her baby still alive. 

The surgery is over, and Martin is ecstatic, feeding his "centipede" with dog food and tinned soup. He delightedly encourages defecation into the mouth of the person behind, right down the line. Urrrgh. He masturbates, and rapes the woman at the back. It's all very disgusting.

Suddenly, the "dead" pregnant woman awakens. She's about to give birth; fleeing, she locks herself in the car with a crazed Martin trying to get in. As Martin leaves the scene the "centipede" splits, the thug bleeding from his mouth. Martin returns to see several smaller centipedes. Enraged, he shoots them until he runs out of bullets, and then starts to behead them with a knife. By now this is pure Grand Guignol. His death, with a centipede up his arse, seems entirely appropriate. 

This film is quite, quite disgusting and is everything that it's predecessor wasn't. It's also a rather good little character study with a message behind the gore; create a marginalised underclass and this is what you get.

The Human Centipede- First Sequence (2009)

"I don't like human beings!"

I first heard about this film many years ago in that Channel 4 quiz show presented by Charlie Brooker, and instantly became aware that it was likely to be a gentle and cute film, ideal for young children and a delight for all the family. I've been meaning to see it for many years simply because it pops up so often in pop culture.

So what did I think? Well, I'm at sold to see why it has such a reputation for gore and controversy; as far as the visually disgusting is concerned, I've seen far worse. If anything, this film is relatively old fashioned in that most of the really stomach-churning stuff is implied, rather than seen; in particular, the scene in which the Japanese man poos into the feisty American woman's mouth is implied through acting penny. Well, it's also implied by the lines "Swallow it, bitch!" and "Feed her! Feed her!", but you take my point. 

The acting, admittedly, is pretty piss poor, except from the magnificent Dieter Laser as a modern day Joseph Mengele. And, given that there are three languages in the film (German, English and Japanese), all if which get a fair bit of dialogue, the lack of subtitles was a surprise. In particular, the long scenes in which two police officers interview the nefarious doctor are hard to follow without them. And the characters are, of course, ciphers; personally I didn't even catch their names.

It's also a very cliched film, with trope after trope bring aired. American tourists in Europe coming a cropper? Check. Two girls having their car break down and unwisely venturing up to a creepy house to ask for help? Check. The two of them falling out? Check. This plot, nastiness aside, could be that of a Universal horror film directed by James Whale.

The bit where the doctor gives a presentation to his three victims, via OHP(!), is suitably and camply sinister. Even more horrific, though, is where the more feisty of our two American ladies, is told that, because she tried to escape, she will be the middle segment. The fact that the poor lady who makes up the rear segment is dying of septicaemia is more horrific still. But the ending, with the middle segment being the only one left alive, is gloriously dark.

This is a fun little film, playing with the tropes of its genre and, I think, exhibiting some very Dutch stereotypes about the Germans. The concepts are disgusting, yes, but there's relatively little visual gore, and I have to praise the film for being, at ninety minutes, a proper length. It's only a bit of fun, be warned, with little in the way of subtext, but it's well made, well shot and enormous fun.